(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing chip antenna, more particularly to a method for manufacturing chip antenna by utilizing a genetic algorithm to encode possible configurations of a metallic wire attached thereon into a plurality of codes as their chromosomes for mating with each other to produce offspring, and utilizing a simulation tool to evaluate the properties of the chromosomes and find the superior chromosomes corresponding to the configurations of metallic wire for manufacturing a chip antenna having superior physic performances.
(2) Prior Art
Wireless communication plays a very important role in the current and future global communication environments. Most of the communication device manufacturers have devoted a lot of efforts on developing wireless communication devices having the ability of successfully communicating in a good quality without being influenced by the environments of locations. On the other hand, since the wireless communication has the ability of transmitting and receiving signals between remote areas, a variety of valued communication services are therefor booming in the recent years. No matter the communication services belong to data transmission, video transmission or audio transmission services, the providers thereof are all intended to utilize the high speed and powerful wireless transmission platform to expand their businesses and benefit the consumers. Therefore, how to develop a wireless communication device to achieve the above requirements and manufacture a wireless communication device remaining slim, compact and user friendly after the above requirements being achieved, is now a very important object for the communication device manufactures.
In recent years, the wireless communication systems, such as cellular phones, have been used widely, the mechanisms and the components of semiconductors installed therein have already been designed to meet the possible miniaturizing demand Even the batteries installed on the cellular phones are also designed by using polymeric materials to effectively reduce their volumes into a slim and compact size. In additional, since the antenna radiation patterns for portable communication devices are desired to have omni-directional radiation pattern, the monopole antenna is thus installed in portable communication devices due to its omni-directional radiation pattern in a horizontal plane. However, the monopole antenna is gradually replaced by resonator antenna (DR antenna) or chip antenna due to the coaxial cables and connectors connected to the monopole antenna will increase the total packaging cost and volume. The chip antenna also have omni-directional radiation pattern, and can be made with small size and be mounted directly on the printed circuit boards (PCB) in the communication devices by using surface-mount-technology (SMT), which not only significantly reduce space occupied by the antenna, but also reduce the assembling cost therefor. Furthermore, the chip antenna can be combined with the circuit board and be hidden in the mechanism to save space for installing other useful mechanisms or circuits to expand its functions and performances. However, there will incur some problems in impedance matching, bandwidth and radiation efficiency while reducing the size of antenna.
The chip antenna 10 currently used in a variety of electronic devices is shown as FIGS. 1 and 2. This kind of chip antenna 10 comprises a substrate 11 made of dielectric material having high dielectric constant xcex5, i.e. the dielectric material with the dielectric constant xcex5 within the range of 1xcx9c130. The most popular dielectric material is the ceramic material of a square or rectangular shape. There are some metallic wires 12 on the top surface of the substrate 11, which are formed by utilizing both photolithography and etching technologies, and then, by utilizing sinter technology, sintered with the ceramic substrate 11. A metallic ground plane 13 is attached on the bottom surface. A coaxial cable 14 having a top feeding pin 141, which penetrates through the ground plane 13 and substrate 11 to contact with the feeding point 121 of the metallic wires 12, and an outer conductor 142, which is in contact with the ground plane 13. Thus, a module of chip antenna 10 is completed and able to receive signals through the metallic wires 12 and transmit the same to the communication device via the feeding pin 141.
In the procedures of manufacturing the conventional chip antenna, the sinter technology necessary for sintering the metallic wires 12 together with ceramic substrate 11 not only will incur very high expenses therefor, but also unable to accurately control the properties of impedance matching, bandwidth and radiation efficiency of the antenna. Therefore, how to quickly and accurately manufacture chip antenna with low cost and high performances is the main topic needs to be solved now.
With respect to the disadvantages of expensive and complicate procedures for manufacturing the conventional chip antenna, the inventor has done a long term efforts in research and experiment, and developed a method for manufacturing an antenna by utilizing a genetic algorithm in order to design an antenna having superior performances. The method not only can effectively simplify the manufacturing procedures, but also can significantly reduce the costs and facilities needed in the procedures, low down the production cost, and miniaturize the volume of antenna.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a method for manufacturing chip antenna by utilizing a genetic algorithm to encode possible configurations of metallic wire attached thereon into a plurality of codes as their chromosomes for mating with each to produce offspring, and utilizing a simulation tool to evaluate the properties of the chromosomes and find the superior chromosomes corresponding to the configurations of metallic wire for manufacturing a chip antenna having superior physic performances.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method for manufacturing chip antenna by utilizing conventional cutting machines to cut a ceramic plate and a metallic film respectively, according to the configurations obtained through the genetic algorithm, to get a substrate and a metallic wire of the appropriate configurations, and then attaching the metallic wire directly to the substrate to form a chip antenna. Since the procedures for manufacturing the chip antenna can be completed easily and quickly by using conventional cutting machines, and the expensive and complicate sintering procedures and facilities is no more needed, it thus significantly reduce the production cost of the antenna.
The above and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description taken with the accompanying drawings.